Stay on target

When’s the last time Rare made a video game? If you don’t know about the British developer’s illustrious 30-year legacy, track down the excellent historical compilation Rare Replay and check out classics like Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, Perfect Dark, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. But ever since jumping ship from Nintendo to Microsoft, the studio has seen somewhat of a decline. The house the Stamper Brothers built has been trapped in Kinect Hell while other teams managed to spin their questionable fighting game Killer Instinct into actual gold (even while featuring questionable Rare characters like the Battletoads).

From any studio, Sea of Thieves would seem ambitious. It’s an open world online adventure about plundering and socializing out on the ocean with your pirate friends. But as the most substantial game Rare has put out in years, the stakes are that much higher. Fortunately, after a lengthy play session with the upcoming Xbox/PC game at a recent Microsoft event, I think Rare knew this was the time to prove what they are still capable of.

With little more than the wind at our backs and a handful of vague treasure maps, me and three others set sail for some general piracy. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag breathed new life into that series with its liberating pirate mechanics, so much so that Ubisoft is basically spinning it off into its own game next year with Skull and Bones. And Sea of Thieves can’t help but feel somewhat familiar if you’ve played those games, or even the similarly stylized The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, due to the shared nautical subject matter.

However, what struck me most about Sea of Thieves was how it eschews crafted content like scripted set pieces content in favor of the emergent joy that can come from a handful of lunatics together on a boat. It’s very anti-AAA. The game purposefully has a more cartoony look to allow for wackier antics that might seem off-putting if done more realistically. It’s pretty much an immersive sim like Deus Ex or System Shock but with a more spread out world and the added multiplayer elements.

For example, before even raising the anchor or angling the sails, we spent a few minutes playing our instruments and drinking so much we couldn’t walk straight. Rare has always had a cheeky English sense of humor, and that tone fits so well with pirates that it makes you wonder why it took them so long to get here (outside King K. Rool in Donkey Kong Country or the abandoned Project Dream).

But eventually we decided we should actually go out and get some treasure. Sea of Thieves gives you maps, but rarely are the maps detailed enough to point you exactly where you need to go. Like honest no-good pirates, you have to rely on your compass and your crew, calling out what direction to go in and when to avoid incoming obstacles. Port! Starboard! Storm up ahead! Don’t crash into that rock!

This focus on true navigation continued once we got to an island, or rather, shot ourselves out of our cannon onto an island. We knew generally where treasure was, but to find the right spot to start digging, we needed to pay attention to landmarks or follows specific clues like “walk seven paces from the mournful turtle.” Meanwhile, enemy skeletons would rise out of the ground for us to fend off with swords or guns that kind of sucked but in a way that felt appropriate.

Skeletons aren’t the only foes to worry about though. Once we loaded our ship with treasure and headed toward the nearest port to cash in, a rival boat full of other real players started tailing us. We frantically fought back, some of us angling the ship in the right direction, others loading and shooting and cannonballs. Some of us even patched up holes in the hull while scooping up excess water with a bucket and shoving scurvy-fighting bananas in our mouths for health.

Once the ships got closer things got even more out of control. Enemies boarded our ship and vice versa. If you die, you enter Davy Jones’s locker for a little bit before returning to the frenzy. I learned this after one enemy got the jump on me during the big fight because I prematurely started playing my victory accordion. And if your ship sinks, you’re thrown into the ocean full of hungry sharks until you find a friendly mermaid who gives you a new vessel.

Fortunately, for us it didn’t come to that. The other ship’s captain ran off with our most valuable treasure. But that chest was also cursed and simulated the effects of drunkenness as long as anyone held it. Wobbling, he fell off the side into the water and I jumped in after him. A wasted sitting duck, he was no match for my pistol. At this point, we were at the beach of the port island, so I grabbed the treasure and woozily swam toward the merchant to finally reap the reward.

It was an awesome unexpected sequence that came about solely from us as players interacting with the game’s presented systems. Sea of Thieves does have crafted content. The three treasure maps we completed made up a voyage quest. But Rare really just wants to provide players with new and evolving ways to stumble into their own pirate adventures. The emphasis on socializing should also make the game a great fit for the faster, more social, more customizable dashboard I checked out coming to Xbox in time for the Xbox One X launch this holiday.

If this 90-minute play sessions was any indication, Sea of Thieves is shaping up to be a delightful watery sandbox as well as a welcome return to form from a beloved developer. As someone who typically plays games alone, I don’t expect its charms to hold up as well for me if I play with strangers online as opposed to helpful guiding developers. But if you want to hang out with friends on the virtual high seas, keep your non-eyepatch eye out for Sea of Thieves coming to Xbox One and PC in early 2018.